435 South Magazine Tasty Tuesday

I know, I know. I’ve been remiss in posting about how to make a custom envelope! But I’ve been busy, I promise. On Saturday, we made our way across the great void that is eastern Colorado to end up in western Kansas, where we will remain until after Thanksgiving. Honestly, I love being in my hometown of Colby, Kansas because it’s so slow and quiet. You can do everything at your own pace, enjoy life, and never leave the house.

Last night and this morning, I was drawing like a fool. I wanted to come up with a good advertisement for 435 South magazine — they’re promoting their Tasty Tuesday deal, which is a $4.35 meal at a featured restaurant every Tuesday. I wanted to channel the idea of eating with a friendly (and attractive) coworker, so to Facebook I flocked.

For about two years now, my friend Marina has been asking me to draw a picture of her. I did draw one around this time last year, but it didn’t look much like her. I think often the problem with drawing people is you draw what you want to see, and not what’s actually there. This time I tried to be disciplined and draw exactly what I was looking at. I chose a picture of Marina about to dig in to some ice cream (which I turned into a salad), and began an intense session with my pencils. Ultimately, I ended up with this:

I love pencil drawings, but thought I should add some color to the situation since this could potentially be in a magazine. I added some muted tones to come up with this:

Finally, I did some serious Photoshopping to arrive at the final design:

So, from pencil drawing to dramatic grunge artistic advertisement — the drawing of Marina that I started last night has come a long way! Tomorrow’s task will be to create a custom holiday card featuring two of the most adorable little boys I have ever seen!